Every so often we hear about vacant properties. Usually they feature as the villains of the piece and are used as an argument against further development. But the issue is not so simple.

Vacant properties include those in seasonal or occasional use, those awaiting completion or modification for occupation by newlyweds or new tenants, or those awaiting partition or the settlement of complex inheritances. The issue has also been compounded by a 75-year sequence of requisition orders, emphyteutical grants and other issues mainly resulting from our disgraceful and archaic post-war rent laws.

An analysis by my colleague Carmel Cacopardo, based on the tables of the Housing Census of 2011 published in The Malta Independent on Sunday of 11 October, shows the number of vacant properties as 18.4 per cent of the entire housing stock and 49.99 per cent of these – ie 9.2 per cent of the whole – as being in good condition.

I do not have figures to confute these but I have a very long experience of house inspections, and houses that were adequate 20 years ago may no longer be adequate now. There is also the domino effect of a house that could be cannibalised or adapted to modernise its neighbour or neighbours – such as amalgamating a first floor with a ground floor – but being obstructed through a ‘protected’ tenancy. I know of several cases where consolidation and improvement of a development is being impeded by ‘protected’ tenancies, in one case by a nine-roomed house with garden occupied by a ‘protected’ solitary tenant.

Vacant properties are eyesores and represent idle capital. They are very seldom vacant due to a whim on the part of the owners, who are often the long-suffering victims of our archaic rent laws. They would like to use their properties or obtain an adequate return from them. Measures to bring such properties into contemporary use should be of the ‘enabling’ and ‘positive’ kind – certainly not of the punitive kind. To punish a long-suffering owner of 75 years’ standing would be the limit. As the Italians would say: “Sopra corna bastonate!”

 

André Zammit

Sliema